David Lynch Posts His Nightmarish Sitcom Rabbits Online–the Show That Psychologists Use to Induce a Sense of Existential Crisis in Research Subjects

in Film, Television | June 10th, 2020

If recent world events feel to you like an exis­ten­tial cri­sis, you may find your­self brows­ing Youtube for calm­ing view­ing mate­r­i­al. But there’s also some­thing to be said for fight­ing fire with fire, so why not plunge straight into the dread and pan­ic with David Lynch’s sit­com Rab­bits? Set “in a name­less city del­uged by a con­tin­u­ous rain” where a fam­i­ly of three humanoid rab­bits live “with a fear­ful mys­tery,” the eight-episode web series has, as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly men­tioned here on Open Cul­ture, been used by Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia psy­chol­o­gists to induce a sense of exis­ten­tial cri­sis in research sub­jects. Hav­ing orig­i­nal­ly shot it on a set in his back­yard in 2002 (and incor­po­rat­ed pieces of it into his 2006 fea­ture Inland Empire), Lynch has just begun mak­ing Rab­bits avail­able again on Youtube.

The first episode of Rab­bits went up yes­ter­day on David Lynch The­ater, the offi­cial Youtube chan­nel of the man who direct­ed Eraser­head, Blue Vel­vet, Mul­hol­land Dri­ve, and oth­er such pieces of Lynchi­an cin­e­ma. Though he has­n’t made a fea­ture film in quite some time, he’s kept busy, as his fre­quent uploads have doc­u­ment­ed: take his 2015 ani­mat­ed short Fire (Pozar), which we fea­tured last month, or his dai­ly Los Ange­les weath­er reports.

More recent­ly, Lynch has been post­ing short videos called “What Is David Work­ing on Today?” These offer just what their title promis­es: a look at such art projects as and craft projects as “a drain spout for the bot­tom of my wood­en sink,” the “swing-out uri­nal” installed, and most recent­ly “the incred­i­ble check­ing stick.”

This might at first sound dispir­it­ing­ly nor­mal — at least until you get to how the check­ing stick is sup­posed to work — but those who have long enjoyed Lynch’s films know that nor­mal­i­ty is what gives them pow­er. David Fos­ter Wal­lace described the “Lynchi­an” as “a par­tic­u­lar kind of irony where the very macabre and the very mun­dane com­bine in such a way as to reveal the for­mer’s per­pet­u­al con­tain­ment with­in the lat­ter.” There is, of course, noth­ing macabre (and often noth­ing mun­dane) about the wood­en objects Lynch builds and repairs in his work­shop these days. But Rab­bits, too, was also one of his home­made projects, and its “sto­ry of mod­ern life,” as Lynch called it on Twit­ter, still makes for a har­row­ing­ly mun­dane view­ing expe­ri­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Lynch Made a Dis­turb­ing Web Sit­com Called “Rab­bits”: It’s Now Used by Psy­chol­o­gists to Induce a Sense of Exis­ten­tial Cri­sis in Research Sub­jects

David Lynch Cre­ates Dai­ly Weath­er Reports for Los Ange­les: How the Film­mak­er Pass­es Time in Quar­an­tine

David Lynch Releas­es an Ani­mat­ed Film Online: Watch Fire (Pozar)

What Makes a David Lynch Film Lynchi­an: A Video Essay

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Are There Limits for a Sitcom Premise? A Pretty Much Pop Culture Podcast (#47) Discussion and Quiz

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | June 10th, 2020

Sit­coms pro­vide a form of escapism that does­n’t take one to a mag­i­cal world of pos­si­bil­i­ty, but instead to a basi­cal­ly unchang­ing, cozy envi­ron­ment with relat­able char­ac­ters engaged in low-stakes con­flicts.

So what are the lim­its on the type of premise that can ground a sit­com? While most of the longest last­ing sit­coms have sim­ple set-ups involv­ing friends or co-work­ers, stream­ing has led to more seri­al­iza­tion and hence wider plot pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Does this mean that the era of sit­coms has come to an end? Or has the genre just broad­ened to admit entries like Ricky Ger­vais’ After Life and Derek, Har­mon & Roi­land’s Rick & Morty, Greg Daniels’ Upload and Space Force, and Arman­do Ian­nuc­ci’s Avenue 5?

In this low-stakes, feel-good dis­cus­sion, Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an also touch on the Parks & Recre­ation reunion spe­cial, Curb Your Enthu­si­asm, It’s Always Sun­ny in Philadel­phia, Com­mu­ni­ty, Mod­ern Fam­i­ly, Red Oaks, The Simp­sons, Last Man on Earth, WOOPS!, the stain of Chuck Lorre, and more. Plus a quiz to guess which weird sit­com premis­es are real and which Mark made up.

Incor­po­rate these arti­cles into your sit­u­a­tion:

If you enjoy this dis­cus­sion, check out our pre­vi­ous episodes on Friends and The Good Place.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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When Lucy Lawless Impersonated Stevie Nicks & Imagined Her as the Owner of a Bad Tex-Mex Restaurant: A Cult Classic SNL Skit

in Comedy, Music, Television | June 5th, 2020

What we wouldn’t give to trav­el back in time to Sedona, Ari­zona for a non-social­ly-dis­tanced $2.99 Tues­day night bur­ri­to spe­cial at Ste­vie Nicks’ Faji­ta Roundup, the hun­dredth best restau­rant in this 161-restau­rant town accord­ing to one rat­ings site.

Alas, the clos­est this Fleet­wood Mac‑flavored Tex-Mex estab­lish­ment has ever come to phys­i­cal exis­tence was in Octo­ber 1998 when actor Lucy Law­less, famous then as now for play­ing Xena the War­rior Princess, was host­ing Sat­ur­day Night Live.

The day before the Wednes­day table read to deter­mine which sketch­es will make it on air, writer Hugh Fink got wind of Law­less’ Ste­vie Nicks imper­son­ation (she also does a mean Chrissie Hyn­de…)

Fink thought this was some­thing to build on, inspired by his dad’s Fleet­wood Mac fan­dom, and the fact that Nicks’ star had dimmed a bit since the band’s 70’s hey­day, when its mem­bers’ inter­per­son­al rela­tions were a hot top­ic and Rumours, still the 8th best sell­ing album of all time, dom­i­nat­ed.

He joined forces with fel­low staff writer, Nicks fan Scott Wainio, tar­ry­ing ’til the wee hours of Wednes­day morn­ing to begin cast­ing about for com­ic ideas of how the sexy, shawl-draped fairy god­moth­er of rock ‘n’ roll might spend her off duty hours, now that “Lind­say Buck­ing­ham and cocaine” were in the rear view.

They decid­ed that hav­ing her own a bar­gain-priced local eatery sim­i­lar to the ones Fink remem­bered din­ing in as a tour­ing stand up was their best bet…and what more fit­ting locale than New Age mec­ca Sedona?

Plot-dri­ven SNL skits often peter out en route from a strong open­ing premise to the end­ing.

As a com­mer­cial par­o­dy, Ste­vie Nicks’ Faji­ta Roundup has no such trou­ble.

As Fink recent­ly recalled in an inter­view with The Ringer’s Dan Devine:

I want­ed this com­mer­cial to come off as not a classy, nation­al­ly pro­duced ad, but clear­ly a cheap, local­ly pro­duced com­mer­cial for a shit­ty restau­rant and that’s why, even in the script, at the time, I put in those cut­aways of, like, real­ly unap­peal­ing, bad-look­ing food with the price, and adver­tis­ing spe­cials. Comed­ical­ly, I thought it’d be even fun­nier if the restau­rant was cheap. The research depart­ment had to get me pho­tos of the Mex­i­can food, which I would approve. I would tell them, ‘No, I want it to look shit­ti­er than that. That looks too good.

The research depart­ment def­i­nite­ly deliv­ered. As did New Zealan­der Law­less, though she lacked the cul­tur­al ref­er­ence points to get the joke, and game as she was, dis­creet­ly tried to get pro­duc­er Lorne Michaels to pull the skit, wor­ried that it was a lead bal­loon.

It came by its laughs hon­est­ly in per­for­mance, the audi­ence eat­ing up retooled Fleet­wood Mac hits pro­mot­ing bur­ri­tos and nachos, but with Youtube some 8 years away, Ste­vie Nicks’ Faji­ta Round Up fad­ed into obscu­ri­ty….

It took a man with vision and a long mem­o­ry to bring it back.

In 2012, Matthew Amador truf­fled up the fond­ly remem­bered clip and start­ed a Face­book page for the hypo­thet­i­cal restau­rant, large­ly so he could claim it had catered the end-of-year intern-appre­ci­a­tion buf­fet at the cast­ing agency where he was work­ing.

The first likes came from the duti­ful interns, but even­tu­al­ly the page attract­ed oth­er like­mind­ed fans, who’d caught the orig­i­nal per­for­mance over a decade before.

It has since migrat­ed to Twit­ter, where “Stevie”—the first female dou­ble inductee to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame —is eager­ly await­ing reopen­ing while remind­ing her fol­low­ers that the Roundup’s tables “have always been a MINIMUM of 6’ apart, giv­ing you a safer din­ing expe­ri­ence you’ll nev­er for­get and giv­ing me plen­ty of room to twirl depend­ing on the length of my fringe.”

View the full tran­script here. And yes, you are cor­rect, that’s Jim­my Fal­lon at the piano, in his 3rd SNL appear­ance.

via The Ringer and Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ste­vie Nicks “Shows Us How to Kick Ass in High-Heeled Boots” in a 1983 Women’s Self Defense Man­u­al

How Fleet­wood Mac Makes A Song: A Video Essay Explor­ing the “Son­ic Paint­ings” on the Clas­sic Album, Rumours

Actress Lucy Law­less Per­forms the Pro­to-Fem­i­nist Com­e­dy “Lysis­tra­ta” for The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Pod­cast

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How David Chase Breathed Life into the The Sopranos

in Television | June 4th, 2020

Warn­ing: watch­ing the above video essay with David Chase, Matthew Wein­er, Ter­ence Win­ter, and the oth­er writ­ers of The Sopra­nos (along with select longer-form videos below) may send you into a binge watch (or re-watch) of the HBO series. Just say­ing, because you might want to set aside some time.

It is hard to believe that the series pre­miere was over 20 years ago, since its insights into Amer­i­ca, our love affair with vio­lence, and the mob hasn’t changed. (I mean, look at the gang­sters cur­rent­ly run­ning the coun­try).

David Chase orig­i­nal­ly balked at the idea of a God­fa­ther-type show after it was pitched to him, but the gang­ster idea stuck and mutat­ed into an idea for a fea­ture film about a mob boss seek­ing ther­a­py. Across town in one of those Hol­ly­wood coin­ci­dences, Harold Ramis was hav­ing the same idea for a film called Ana­lyze This.

Ramis’ film would be a per­fect­ly fine com­e­dy and Chase wound up tak­ing his fea­ture idea and turn­ing it into a tele­vi­sion series. It would go on to rev­o­lu­tion­ize tele­vi­sion and change the gang­ster genre for good. For now here was a show about gang­sters who were all very aware of the film and tele­vi­sion his­to­ry of the genre, and they act­ed accord­ing to the roles that they idol­ized from The God­fa­ther and from Good Fel­las. Yet, as Chase points out, the char­ac­ters nev­er real­ly know how to feel about all this:

To me it wasn’t just the end­ing that was ambigu­ous. There was ambi­gu­i­ty going on all the time. And you know what that comes down to now that I think about it—the char­ac­ters in the piece were ambigu­ous them­selves. They didn’t know how they felt. When you write a scene some­times you think, does this guy real­ly believe what he’s say­ing? Does he real­ly feel this? Or is this just a place­hold­er in his mind? ‘I’ll say this line just so I can eat my sandwich’…That’s why [the show] is so fun to write, because usu­al­ly you are writ­ing what peo­ple are think­ing of feel­ing, but in The Sopra­nos you’re always writ­ing what they’re *not* think­ing or feel­ing.

These were brutish, dumb guys who believed they were the clever, fun­ny guys they grew up watch­ing, and you can extrap­o­late that to quite a lot of our his­to­ry from the Cold War and beyond—electing peo­ple based on who we want them to be, or for the role they play, not for who they actu­al­ly are. The end point of Tony Soprano’s ther­a­py ses­sions is not that he was “cured,” but that he learned the lan­guage of ther­a­py in order to jus­ti­fy his actions to him­self. As Wein­er says, Dr. Melfi’s real­iza­tion was, “This was all a waste of time. He can’t be helped. I’ve just made him be a bet­ter crim­i­nal.” Once a sociopath, always a sociopath.

Chase also reveals how the show was struc­tured for each of its sev­en, 13-episode sea­sons, with char­ac­ter arcs orig­i­nal­ly being plot­ted as sep­a­rate sto­ries. But inevitably in the writ­ers’ room, the the­mat­ic con­nec­tions between the sto­ries would reveal them­selves and the scripts would be tweaked accord­ing­ly. Con­ver­sa­tions in the room would often be about every­thing *except* the sto­ry and the char­ac­ters. In the end this was all mate­r­i­al that would wind up in the show, the mulch that would cre­ate the gar­den.

This is a good time indeed for a rewatch. Not only did crit­ics Matthew Zoller Seitz and Alan Sepin­wall drop the lov­ing­ly detailed The Sopra­no Ses­sions last year, but actors Michael Impe­ri­oli (Christo­pher Molti­san­ti) and Steve Schirri­pa (Bob­by Bac­calieri) have a pod­cast where they are cur­rent­ly rewatch­ing and com­ment­ing on the show, one episode at a time. You can find all their episodes so far on this youtube playlist. The show is also list­ed in our new col­lec­tion, The 150 Best Pod­casts to Enrich Your Mind.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

HBO Is Stream­ing 500 Hours of Shows for Free: The Sopra­nos, The Wire, and More

How Mar­tin Scors­ese Directs a Movie: The Tech­niques Behind Taxi Dri­ver, Rag­ing Bull, and More

60 Free Film Noir Movies

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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Is It Rude to Talk Over a Film? MST3K’s Mary Jo Pehl on Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #45

in Comedy, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | May 28th, 2020

We live in a com­men­tary cul­ture with much appre­ci­a­tion for camp and snark, but some­thing spe­cial hap­pened in the ear­ly ’90s when Mys­tery Sci­ence The­ater 3000 pop­u­lar­ized this addi­tive form of com­e­dy, where jokes are made dur­ing a full-length or short film. Mary Jo Pehl was a writer and per­former on MST3K and has since riffed with fel­low MST3K alums for Riff­trax and Cin­e­mat­ic Titan­ic.

Mark, Eri­ca, and Bri­an briefly debate the ethics of talk­ing over some­one else’s art and then inter­view Mary Jo about how riffs get writ­ten, devel­op­ing a riff­ing style and a char­ac­ter that the audi­ence can con­nect with (do you need to include skits to estab­lish a premise for why riff­ing is hap­pen­ing?), riff­ing films you love vs. old garbage, the degree to which riff­ing has gone beyond just MST3K-asso­ci­at­ed come­di­ans, VH-1’s Pop-Up Video, and more.

Fol­low Mary Jo @MaryJoPehl.

Here are a some links to get you watch­ing riff­ing:

Dif­fer­ent teams have dif­fer­ent styles of riff­ing, so if you hate MST3K, you might want to see if you just hate those guys or hate the art form as a whole. The alums them­selves cur­rent­ly work as:

Here are a few rel­e­vant arti­cles:

Also, PROJECT: RIFF is the website/database we talk about where a guy named Andrew fig­ured out how many riffs per minute are in each MST3K episode, which char­ac­ter made the joke, and oth­er stuff.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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Hyperland: The “Fantasy Documentary” in Which Douglas Adams and Doctor Who’s Tom Baker Imagine the World Wide Web (1990)

in History, Sci Fi, Technology, Television | May 14th, 2020

Thir­ty years ago, the inter­net we use today would have looked like sci­ence fic­tion. Now as then, we spend a great deal of time star­ing at streams of video, but the high-tech 21st cen­tu­ry has endowed us with the abil­i­ty to cus­tomize those streams as nev­er before. No longer do we have to set­tle for tra­di­tion­al tele­vi­sion and the tyran­ny of “what’s on”; we can fol­low our curios­i­ty wher­ev­er it leads through vast, ever-expand­ing realms of image, sound, and text. No less a sci­ence-fic­tion writer than Dou­glas Adams dreams of just such realms in Hyper­land, a 1990 BBC “fan­ta­sy doc­u­men­tary” that opens to find him fast asleep amid the mind­less sound and fury spout­ed unceas­ing­ly by his tele­vi­sion set — so unceas­ing­ly, in fact, that it keeps on spout­ing even when Adams gets up and toss­es it into a junk­yard.

Amid the scrap heaps Adams meets a ghost of tech­nol­o­gy’s future: his “agent,” a dig­i­tal fig­ure played by Doc­tor Who star Tom Bak­er. “I have the hon­or to pro­vide instant access to every piece of infor­ma­tion stored dig­i­tal­ly any­where in the world,” says Bak­er’s Vir­gil to Adams’ Dante. “Any pic­ture or film, any sound, any book, any sta­tis­tic, any fact — any con­nec­tion between any­thing you care to think of.”

Adams’ fans know how much the notion must have appealed to him, unex­pect­ed con­nec­tions between dis­parate aspects of real­i­ty being a run­ning theme in his fic­tion. It became espe­cial­ly promi­nent in the Dirk Gen­tly’s Holis­tic Detec­tive Agency Series, whose wide range of ref­er­ences includes Samuel Tay­lor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan — one of the many pieces of infor­ma­tion Adams has his agent pull up in Hyper­land.

Adams’ jour­ney along this pro­to-Infor­ma­tion Super­high­way also includes stops at Beethoven’s 9th Sym­pho­ny, Picas­so’s Guer­ni­ca, and Kurt Von­negut’s the­o­ry of the shape of all sto­ries. Such a path­way will feel famil­iar to any­one who reg­u­lar­ly goes down “rab­bit holes” on the inter­net today, a pur­suit — or per­haps com­pul­sion — enabled by hyper­text. Already that term sounds old fash­ioned, but at the dawn of the 1990s active­ly fol­low­ing “links” from one piece of infor­ma­tion, so com­mon now as to require no intro­duc­tion or expla­na­tion, struck many as a mind-bend­ing nov­el­ty. Thus the pro­gram’s seg­ments on the his­to­ry of the rel­e­vant tech­nolo­gies, begin­ning with U.S. gov­ern­ment sci­en­tist Van­nevar Bush and the the­o­ret­i­cal “Memex” sys­tem he came up with at the end of World War II — and first described in an Atlantic Month­ly arti­cle you can, thanks to hyper­text, eas­i­ly read right now.

Though to an extent required to stand for the con­tem­po­rary view­er, Adams was hard­ly a tech­no­log­i­cal neo­phyte. An ardent ear­ly adopter, he pur­chased the very first Apple Mac­in­tosh com­put­er ever sold in Europe. “I hap­pen to know you’ve writ­ten inter­ac­tive fic­tion your­self,” says Bak­er, refer­ring to the adven­ture games Adams designed for Info­com, one of them based on his beloved Hitch­hik­er’s Guide to the Galaxy nov­els. Though Adams’ con­sid­er­able tech savvy makes all this look amus­ing­ly pre­scient, he could­n’t have known just then how con­nect­ed every­one and every­thing was about to become. “While Dou­glas was cre­at­ing Hyper­land,” says his offi­cial web site, “a stu­dent at CERN in Switzer­land was work­ing on a lit­tle hyper­text project he called the World Wide Web.” And despite his ear­ly death, the man who dreamed of an elec­tron­ic “guide­book” con­tain­ing and con­nect­ing all the knowl­edge in the uni­verse lived long enough to see that such a thing would one day become a real­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Play The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Video Game Free Online, Designed by Dou­glas Adams in 1984

In 1999, David Bowie Pre­dicts the Good and Bad of the Inter­net: “We’re on the Cusp of Some­thing Exhil­a­rat­ing and Ter­ri­fy­ing”

John Tur­tur­ro Intro­duces Amer­i­ca to the World Wide Web in 1999: Watch A Beginner’s Guide To The Inter­net

Pio­neer­ing Sci-Fi Author William Gib­son Pre­dicts in 1997 How the Inter­net Will Change Our World

Sci-Fi Author J.G. Bal­lard Pre­dicts the Rise of Social Media (1977)

Arthur C. Clarke Pre­dicts the Inter­net & PC in 1974

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Star Trek: World-Building Over Generations—Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #42

in Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Sci Fi, Television | May 7th, 2020

The world-wide Trib­ble infes­ta­tion and Star Trek: Picard drop­ping make this an apt time to address our most philo­soph­i­cal sci-fi fran­chise. 44 years of thought exper­i­ments (with pho­ton tor­pe­does!) about what it is to be human should have taught us some­thing, and Bri­an Hirt, Eri­ca Spyres, and Mark Lin­sen­may­er along with Drew Jack­son (Eri­ca’s hus­band) reflect on what makes a Star Trek sto­ry, world build­ing over gen­er­a­tions in Gene Rod­den­ber­ry’s land, canon you don’t remem­ber vs. some­thing that just has­n’t been shown on screen, Trek vs. Wars, and step-chil­dren like The Orville and Galaxy Quest.

We have gath­ered a heap of arti­cles for fur­ther cog­i­ta­tion:

For some sug­gest­ed episodes to catch up on, there are lists online rec­om­mend­ing those from the orig­i­nal series and from the fran­chise over­all. There are also fan cre­ations like these orig­i­nal series episodes, a Star Trek musi­cal, and of course the Impro­vised Star Trek pod­cast. For some rel­e­vant words from Rod Rod­den­ber­ry, check out episode 55 of the Mis­sion Log pod­cast.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

 

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Soundtrack Composer Craig Wedren (Zoey’s Playlist, Glow, Shrill) Joins Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #41 on TV Musicals

in Music, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop, Television | April 30th, 2020

Craig was the front-man of the brainy punk band Shud­der to Think from the mid-’80s through the ’90s and has cre­at­ed music for many TV shows and films. He joins your hosts Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt due to his involve­ment with the cur­rent NBC musi­cal dram­e­dy Zoey’s Extra­or­di­nary Playlist, which along with Glee, Crazy Ex-Girl­friend, Nashville, Rise, etc. rep­re­sents a new era of musi­cals as main­stream TV.

Why are shows like this being cre­at­ed at this point in our cul­tur­al his­to­ry? These shows all use some nar­ra­tive expla­na­tion for why there’s singing (i.e. the songs are diagetic) instead of just hav­ing the char­ac­ters sing as in a clas­sic musi­cal or a film like The Great­est Show­man or La La Land. Most of these also make heavy use of cov­er tunes and/or par­o­dies in a way that stage musi­cals usu­al­ly don’t. And of course there’s often a heavy use of auto­tune and more star-based cast­ing than is the norm for stage pro­duc­tions.

Some arti­cles to pro­vide an overview of the top­ic:

Note that Craig does­n’t cre­ate the actu­al songs that the cast mem­bers sing for Zoey’s, just the inter­sti­tial music, but he’s writ­ten heaps of songs and is in a great posi­tion to talk with us about every­thing from Cop Rock to Mama Mia. We also touch on musi­cal episodes in Com­mu­ni­ty and Buffy the Vam­pire Slay­er, Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, karaoke in film, Adam Schlesinger, Stop Mak­ing Sense (also see David Byrne’s mobile band on Col­bert) and a weird Net­flix lip-sync dra­ma called Sound­track,

Lis­ten to Craig talk about his own tunes on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music and watch his dai­ly Sab­bath Ses­sions at facebook.com/craigwedrenmusic or on YouTube. Hear the song he wrote for School of Rock.

Learn more at prettymuchpop.com. This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts or start with the first episode.

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